Arabic traces in Alexander Humboldt’s Kosmos and Central Asian geographies

Abstract

Alexander Humboldt ranks among the scholars of Weimar Classicism who not only appreciated Arabic contributions to the universal heritage of sciences but revived a long lost cosmological and universal understanding of sciences, tracing back to flourishing periods of the Abbasids from early 9th century onwards. A universalistic approach to historical layers of sciences follows long-term developments, retracing historical layers in sciences’ history while overcoming outdated Eurocentric concepts of periodization (middle ages, modernity etc.). The Abbasid Era under Caliph Ma’mūn in the first third of 9th ACE with Baghdad at its center introduced an Early Enlightenment reaching finally Middle Europe. Scientific classifications were approved, interdisciplinary, experimental sciences enhanced and scientific travelling flourished. Alexander Humboldt not only reflected upon Arabic contributions to the universal heritage of sciences but followed up Arabic universalism himself, applying it during his scientific travelling. The Humboldtian approach combined scientific traveling with interdisciplinary observations, determinations (geographic coordinates), and classifications from the very beginnings onwards. When traveling Central Asia in 1829, he especially showed an interest to Arabic contributions in the field of geography and cartography. Humboldt had not only studied Arabic sources on Central Asia but compared historical coordinates with his own measurements. The source studies of Fuat Sezgin (1924–2018) enable nowadays to comprehend the important contributions of Arabic-Islamic geography and cartography, and while contextualizing the rich fund historically, Eurocentric distortions in the history of science, here geography and cartography, losing their relevancy.